


interlude: above all, love

by pennyproud



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Biracial Character, Coming of Age, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Racism, YES it took me two years to write my biracial bitty fic AND WHAT ABOUT IT, the racism/homophobia isn't excessive it's just in line with what the deep south is like, yes he's black and what about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 19:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15153977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennyproud/pseuds/pennyproud
Summary: "take the shackles off my feet so i can dance, you broke my chains now i can lift my hands."or, "He doesn’t make any friends when he starts school. He misses his Momma too much, but he tries not to cry because his Daddy said he wasn’t supposed to. He wants to say No, he wants to ask, Do I have to leave home?, he wants to ask, Why do they look at you like that when you come pick me up, Daddy? But his mouth isn’t big enough for words like that yet. His heart isn’t strong enough. (They ask him after the first time Coach picks him up if he’s his real Daddy, whatever that means. His Dad’s hand is brown sugar and Eric’s is a Nilla wafer, and they’re made for each other.But Eric’s mouth isn’t big enough for those words, yet.)"





	interlude: above all, love

**Author's Note:**

> Whew, chile...the PROCRASTINATION! It literally took me two years to write this, because the concept and everything written here is so personal to me, means so much to me. It was important for me to not paint my people as a monolith, and to show the pain and joy that is being black in the South. It feels like coming home, and that's what I wanted this fic to feel like. A couple of things: gospel music & religion are both addressed in this fic, but gospel music is very much treated as a separate entity (as it is by many black people w/ a bad experience with the Baptist church). If you're not religious and not familiar with black gospel music, I really suggest listening to Never Would Have Made It by Marvin Sapp, Shackles by Mary Mary, and Looking for You by Kirk Franklin. Never Would Have Made It, Strange Fruit by Nina Simone, Saint Pablo and Ultralight Beam by Kanye West provided much of the inspiration as I wrote this. There are religious references throughout this, but it's not a testament to Eric's love of God or anything, they just Are because that's a big part of being black in the south. Anyway I'll shut the fuck up now LMFAOOOO, I hope you enjoy!

_“we are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”_   _(3 corinthians 4:8)_

 **+** **_“above all, love_** _each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.” (1 peter 4:8)_

**::**

_“father, this prayer is for everyone that feels they're not good enough.”_

**::**

Eric Richard Bittle is born two weeks early and doesn’t leave the hospital for three days. He won’t remember it, but his Momma sobs into his Daddy’s shoulder for all three of those days, asks God to take her instead if someone has to go, prays for dominion at the door of the nursery, until, finally, the doctor comes in with a smile on his face. “He’s going to be alright.” The man says, his back almost completely to Eric’s daddy. They’re too happy to notice. Suzanne keeps crying.

Let’s start at one. There are flowers in the garden and Coach becomes Coach when he gets the job with the local football team. Eric babbles in the stands, pulling at his mother’s arm, trying to get leverage to see his daddy on the sidelines of the game, screaming out instructions to the players.

Okay, so, two, Eric has his first birthday party and meets his sister, Aaliyah, from his Daddy’s first marriage. Her skin is a lot darker than his, and it’s the first time he really remembers thinking about how he looks...different than a lot of his family. His Meemaw reaches out and pulls him into her chest, her brown skin sagging a little around her mouth but her smile still bright. It’s the first time Eric wonders why he doesn’t have a Meemaw who looks like his Momma, but then it’s time to cut the cake, and he forgets all about it.

Three. He doesn’t make any friends when he starts school. He misses his Momma too much, but he tries not to cry because his Daddy said he wasn’t supposed to. He wants to ask _Why,_ he wants to ask, _Why do I have to leave home?,_ he wants to ask, _Why do they look at you like that when you come to pick me up, Daddy?_ But his mouth isn’t big enough for words like that yet. His heart isn’t strong enough. (They ask him after the first time Coach picks him up if he’s his _real Daddy,_ whatever that means. His Dad’s hand is brown sugar and Eric’s is a Nilla wafer, and they’re made for each other.

But Eric’s mouth isn’t big enough for those words, yet.)

Five, six, seven. They all fly by. Eric sees Aaliyah on birthdays and on the Fourth of July and for two weeks during the summer, but other than that, she stays away. She never comes outside to play when they spend the night in the spare room at Meemaw’s house, but Eric never thinks about it. His Daddy told him he talks too much so he tries to be quieter. He sinks into the backseat of the car when they pick him up from school and tries to disappear.

He meets his cousin Jay. His ears are too big for his head but they have the same nose, kind of, and when they’re seven Jay shows up on the Fourth of July with little strings of hair falling around his face. Eric’s missing his front teeth so he can’t say “locs” without making his whole family laugh, but he tries anyway. He tells Aaliyah he missed her while he was outside every night before they go to sleep.

When he's eight, they drive to Darien to see his Mom's family and Eric knows he's different. His dad doesn't come, and no one talks to him except Ashley, his cousin with curly hair and light skin. They're inseparable and Eric cries when his Momma says it's time for them to drive back home.

When he's nine, on the walk back from school, Ms. Mabel at the end of his block smiles and waves at him, asks him about how his day was. He answers happily, and she hands him a cookie and sends him on his way. When Eric tells his Daddy about it, the man's face screws up in a new kind of anger and goes to talk to Momma. He spits out something about not wanting his son to associate with "One of those—!" Well. That day, Eric learns that some words sink deeper in your stomach than others. His Momma, gently, asks him not to see Ms. Mabel anymore. Eric argues that her and the friend who lives with her, Ms. Kacey, are nice and all the things they bake taste good. His Momma smiles, but it looks sad.

"How about I teach you to make something that tastes _even better_?" Eric nods in awe and his Momma teaches him how to make an apple pie that same night.

(He takes it to school and he says it's for his friends, but, really, he doesn't have friends at his school, and he gives it to Ms. Mabel on his way home. She looks at him like he is made of stars and Eric wonders how anyone could hate her.)

Eric is still trying to sink into the cloth covering the backseat of their car. For some reason, he seems to want to disappear.

::

When he’s ten, Eric confirms with his Momma that he likes his Dad's side of the family, more. His Momma smiles a sad little smile and agrees with him. He likes how thick the macaroni is, and his Auntie Jay teaches him how to drop chicken in grease without popping himself. He laughs as it sizzles and his Aunties look at him fondly. "You have such good hair," His great auntie says, staring at him proudly and running her dark, wrinkly fingers through Eric's blond locks.

The air of the cookout tenses when his Auntie Alba shows up. She's holding Eric's other Auntie's hand, and although his Daddy pulls him away from them, his Meemaw hugs them both and then chastises them for being so late. Everything picks back up again.

::

Eric doesn’t cry when his Momma tells him they’re moving to Madison.

“That’s where Aaliyah lives, right? And Grandma?” His dad smiles and nods.

“Some of your Aunties live there too.” This time, Eric smiles, and his Daddy laughs and tells him to go wash the flour out of his hair.

(He hears his Momma and Daddy talking late the night before they leave.

“It’ll be better for him.” His father says, sounding comforting.

“Nowhere’s gonna be better for him, James.”

Eric goes back up the steps and lays in his empty bed.)

::

He’s in middle school the first time he realizes that he’s different, the way his chest tightens when a locker slams or when JJ from his Chemistry class leans over and asks for notes. His Mom always says that she’ll love him no matter what, and Aaliyah says it, too, her mouth big enough for words like “unconditional” as she entered high school.

So Eric tells her. Well, kind of. He doesn’t tell her about the things he sees when he has to walk through the high school locker room to help Coach after school, he doesn’t tell her about those shows he’s been sneaking and watching when no one is around, Will and Grace and Queer Eye. He doesn’t tell her about how he stood in the bathroom mirror and put his hand on his hip and pressed a hand to his chest, gestures big and dramatic, and finally felt like he didn’t want to disappear.

He says, “Momma?” She hums a response. He says, “I think I like boys, maybe.” He has a whole speech planned, but the way she _looks_ at him. His mouth has grown but now there aren’t words big enough for this. She blinks, a long moment passing, maybe some tears welling in Eric’s eyes before she smiles almost forcefully.

“What do you want for dinner, baby?” She asks, and for a moment, Eric thinks he imagined telling her, the words floating up into the air, like Toto in _The Wiz._ But the way her hands are clenching each other in her lap. Eric swallows.

“Fried pork chops.” She smiles and nods, getting up and shuffling into the kitchen.

Eric doesn’t know why, maybe it’s because the words are too big or because his mouth is too small or because there are things that will hurt your heart so much to think that your brain won’t allow it, but the next time he stares at himself in the bathroom mirror, he sobs until his whole body goes red.

He’s twelve.

He imagines what it would feel like for him to separate atom by atom, return to the air.

::

Aaliyah invites him to go see Jay in Atlanta with her. His father grips onto his shoulder tightly, says “No,” for the both of them. Aaliyah sneers at him.

Yesterday, they watched The Little Mermaid on their new DVD player. He thinks about the scene where Ursula took Ariel’s voice.

Eric thinks _I am still waiting for legs in exchange,_ but he lets those words die in his throat.

::

All the women in his family have calluses on their hands from hours in the kitchen. Eric’s Daddy and his Uncles all sit around and watch TV during Sunday dinner, shouting at the screen during football season. His Meemaw ushers him into the kitchen, and Eric knows she only gets away with it because Daddy still feels the way she used to smash her belt against his thighs when he was growing up.

There are things the world took from his father’s family.

He has two Uncles he’s never met. They died in Vietnam. His great-grandfather had called and said he was almost home when he stopped at a gas station in Indiana and used a payphone. They found his body in the river two weeks later. There are things the world took from them that they can never forgive it for, no matter what the pastor says. They have to stop in Kentucky whenever they go up North. _Never stop in Indiana,_ everyone in his family says, pain coursing through all of them.

There are things the world is still taking from them.

Aaliyah comes home crying with her hair undone, saying how they pulled on it. She flinches when Eric reaches out for her, and suddenly it feels like there are worlds between them. _I wish I could have gone with you to Atlanta,_ Eric wants to say, but Aaliyah’s mom has already come to get her.

He watched his entire family hold their breath when their new president stepped out of his car for the first time. His Great Uncle shook Kennedy’s hand before they killed him.

There are things unbearable.

::

Jay comes to Madison every summer and they all spend the night at Meemaw’s house, in her spare room, with the chest of toys and plastic wrapped couches. They only go home for a change of clothes, and Eric’s Daddy leans down and gives him a kiss on the cheek, ruffling his hair and patting his back, telling him to hurry back to Meemaw before the streetlights come on.

Jay’s hair is to his shoulders now, and Aaliyah’s isn’t straight anymore. Eric didn’t even know her hair could curl, so used to the shiny sleekness of her relaxer. High school is changing her, maybe for the better. She still comes home crying sometimes. Maybe for the worse.

“This town is so fucking small, man,” Jay says, his voice deeper than it was last summer but still cracking sometimes. Eric wishes he looked more like Jay. Wishes he felt like he was always in between something. They have to whisper because Meemaw said that if she heard them laughing again she was going to make them go outside and pick out a switch. The cicadas chirp outside the open window. Aaliyah’s feet are in between Jay and Eric’s heads. Everything is okay.

::

Church is church. At least Daddy doesn’t make him sing the choir. Ellen gets on American Idol and the guest pastor preaches all about how sinful it is. Auntie Alba walks right out, Eric’s other Auntie in tow. Dad faces the front.

During the car ride home, Momma looks at Eric through the rearview mirror, sees him as he’s trying to disappear, and it’s the first time that Eric thinks about _that day_ since it happened.

He thinks about himself, twelve years old, tears in his eyes as he convulsed in the bathtub. He thought he could wash it away.

Eric turns away from his Mother’s gaze and looks at the streets of Madison melt into one another. Kirk Franklin screams praise on the radio.

The sun is setting.

::

There are three parts to trauma: the before, the during, and the after. The hardest part, Eric thinks, is that, after that day, with his fists bloody from banging against the locker door, the walls closing in on him, the laughing and the screaming and his Father’s face as he fell out onto the floor of the changing rooms, he will always be living in the after.

He’s been living in the after, with the move to Madison and his first starting hockey, and the sound his head had made against the boards as they slammed his small body into them. He thinks about Aaliyah coming home crying. He doesn’t know what all of them did wrong. He thinks about the way he had looked at JJ. Well. He knew what he had done wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Eric had whispered to no one in particular. He sees his great-grandfather, in the corner of his eyes, standing at the payphone in Indiana. He sees himself with his knees pulled up to his chest, the water from the shower as cold as possible. He’s spent his entire life trying to wake himself up from this bad dream. “I’m sorry,” Eric mumbles again, his head lolling to the side as sleep takes him during the ride home, Nina Simone singing on the radio.

_Strange fruit, hanging—_

He thinks. It would be nice to evaporate.

::

Jay is taller than him.

Almost everyone is, but especially Jay, who had spent the whole day dunking over Eric’s head and laughing about all the trouble he would get into when he went overseas in the fall.

It’s their last summer in Georgia, Eric knows.

“I’m not coming back.” Jay had almost whispered, as Aaliyah and Eric stared at the chipped ceiling of their Grandma’s guest room in silence. In all the time she’s had it, only the three of them, and, occasionally, their other cousins, had stayed in it. All the toys they played with when they were children are stuffed into a box somewhere in the closet. Eric swallows a lump in his throat.

_So this is getting older._

“Promise me,” Eric says, his voice rough and the moon swaddling their room like a newborn. “That we won’t turn into our Aunties.” There’s a pause, but it’s not because they don’t understand what he means.

All three of them had seen the picture of their Aunts in high school, hugged together and smiling brightly. Now, at Sunday dinners, they talk to each other like they’re strangers. Eric feels the ends of Aaliyah’s hair brush the tips of his fingers. _How could she ever be a stranger?_ _How could Jay ever be a stranger?_

 _They would be like this forever_ , Eric thinks, _Young and happy and always waiting for the next summer_.

“Never.” Aaliyah answers. Jay nods.

“Never.” He says, his dreads framing his face. “Besides, our potato salad is _way_ better.” And it’s funny. Funny in the way that Titi Yasmin forgetting to wash the greens before cooking them was, funny like eighteenth birthdays, funny like when they were six and they had gotten away with stealing pieces of sweet potato pie.

So Eric laughs.

He laughs and laughs until Aaliyah hits him because Meemaw will still make them go outside and pick out a switch.

And then the three of them laugh some more.

::

He hears the jazz band play during his taddie tour. He calls out his Father’s name but no one hears him.

::

His freshman year, he tries to mention it offhandedly, hoping that it will just be brushed over, but the conversation stops when he starts talking about his Meemaw and how long Baptist churches took. He hadn’t even thought about it.

Ransom smiles, and then asks, “Where is your family from?”

 _Georgia,_  Eric wants to answer, but that’s not what Ransom is asking. _The plantation was in Alabama,_ he wants to say.

 _Indiana,_ he wants to say, but instead, he just forces himself to laugh. “How should I know?” Justin laughs along with him.

::

Jack presses him into the boards and he collapses, pulls his knees to his chest and imagines cold water hitting his back.

He is still living in the after.

There are things the world took from him that he will never get back.

::

Being black is, maybe, the joy of his life. _That’s why he’s so afraid to lose it, that’s why he’s so afraid to tell them—_

He loves the food, and the history, and his people’s strength. He wishes, with his pale skin, that he could stand on the front lines, be a river, _Jesus, be a fence,_ the congregation says.

He sees the way they look at Ransom.

_Strange fruit, hanging —_

He wakes the Haus up to clean on Sundays with Kirk Franklin’s booming voice and laughs when Jack says, “I almost miss the Beyonce,” because it’s Sunday and the world is still spinning and even Jack’s current aversion to both Bitty and Beyonce can’t ruin that. His Momma sends him pictures of what his Meemaw cooks that day, and he sends back, “ _:( So jealous! No one here can make sweet tea right!”_ Momma replies with a picture of Meemaw smiling.

Eric looks up, thinks about how Ransom had made them all Jollof (“Before a Ghanian comes and tries to corrupt your tastebuds.”), and how no one had blinked off him coming out. He misses his family.

He doesn’t miss Madison.

For the first time, he wants to exist.

::

The rest of the team doesn’t understand why gospel music makes him cry. He wants to say, _This is mine, you don’t need to understand it, this belongs to me,_ he wants to say, _it’s not about God,_ he wants to say, _This is all they had._

_This is all my people had, this kept us alive._

He hasn’t been to church in years, but gospel music is different. The way the choir sounds.

_Never would have made it—_

_Strange fruit, hanging—_

_Never would have made it, without you._

::

Jack says, “Eat more protein,” and Eric smiles and nods, because he knows he’s on his way to being that boy’s friend, no matter what Jack has to say about it. He’s measuring the wall of his room — he needed to know if he was working with cardboard cutout Beyonce space or just poster Beyonce space — when his phone rings. It’s his Daddy, the word ‘Coach’ illuminating the screen, a picture of the two of them when Eric was seven on his screen. He tries to remember if they ever hugged again after that as he answers.

“Hi, Coach.” He says into the receiver.

“Eric,” His Daddy starts, his voice breaking to pieces at the end of the word. Bitty almost drops the phone.

He’s never seen his Daddy cry.

(Except maybe, in that hospital, his head wrapped to catch the blood that was against the boards in the rink, he had heard a sniffle, but —)

“Daddy?” Eric asks, something terrible and deep and dreadful building in his stomach. “Daddy, what’s—”

“You gotta come home, baby,” It’s his Mom now, her voice shaky too, and Eric can hear his Father sobbing in the background. “You gotta— you gotta come home, Eric.”

There are things —

_Hanging, from the poplar trees —_

There are things unbearable.

::

Meemaw’s funeral is a three-day affair, with drinking and so much food you need to take a nap every other hour, and so much fucking pain that Eric thinks the world is going to swallow them all whole. He kisses the top of her casket, watches from the side as Jay and Coach and his two Uncles carry her to the dirt. Aaliyah sings Amazing Grace, or, most of it because towards the end she’s just sobbing.

Eric squeezes his eyes shut, imagines that he’s back in her spare room with Aaliyah’s feet next to his head and the cicadas singing and the entire world waiting outside the door for them to fall into its clutches. Jay hasn’t talked once.

It eats Eric up inside, how much he misses her. He turns corners that summer and keeps expecting her to be there, to bring him into her arms and let him sit on her lap and have her tell him all about what Madison was like when she was little, have her wrinkly hands run through his blonde hair and say how pretty it was. Eric lost his grandmother and his family lost their glue and suddenly a life of pretending is losing its charm.

Aaliyah sits next to him, runs her hand through the hair she’s straightened for the funeral. “She liked it better this way,” She laughs bitterly. Eric’s great-grandmother used to put clothespins on Meemaw’s nose, trying to make it slimmer.

Eric cuts off all his hair.

The days he's at home that summer, everything he thought he knew shifts.

When he was eleven his Grandma made him customized oven mitts, and Eric had been so excited he missed Aaliyah opening her present.

Grandma buys her bleaching soap, that year. Aaliyah sees the white woman on the packaging and her grandma smiles. Aaliyah spent summers smelling emptiness instead of apple pie because Eric’s grandma had put clothes pin on her nose, trying to make is smaller, trying to make her prettier. While Eric was running through fields, their Grandma was running a hot comb through Aaliyah's nappy hair, burning the skin on her gentle neck, making her pretty.

"You have such good hair." Eric's grandma had always said. Now, he looks at his brown eyes and blond hair and sees someone he does not recognize. Grief changes the way that mirrors look back at you.

He cuts his hair off, that summer. When Coach stares at him, he looks away.

He tries to—

Well. You know what he tries to do.

::

Jack stares at his haircut at the beginning of the year, and then Eric could swear he blushes a little. “It’s, um, nice.” Considering that this time last year Jack was actively trying to get Eric kicked off the team, the compliment might have well come from God himself.

He wears short shorts that year, gets drunker, does more vaguely white shit like try quinoa (ew) and pumpkin spice lattes (and, frankly, white people really might have been on to something with that one because god DAMN— ). He cooks with Jack and smiles at Jack but also he makes out with this Dominican boy who’s majoring in Urban Planning at least three times a week, so he’s basically living his best life.

(Every time he bakes, he feels the phantom of his grandma’s hand, guiding him through the process. He misses her so much he aches with it, sometimes.)

“Jack, how do you say rims in French?” Jack blushes bright red, pausing from laying down a strip of pie crust. Eric keeps going. “‘Cause we’re supposed to write about our dreams or whatever, but God as my damn witness, all I have ever wanted is to be happy and to put some rims on my granddaddy’s Cadillac.”

Jack finally breathes again. Eric doesn’t read too much into it, but he scoots a little closer, just because it can’t hurt. (Can it? He thinks of that bathtub in Madison.)

 _“Jantes,”_ Jack answers.

“Jant-es.” Eric stumbles out, and Jack laughs the loudest Eric has ever heard him. “Okay, well, fuck you too, buddy.”

“Why didn’t you take Spanish?!” Jack exclaims, collapsing over into laughter, and Eric is helpless to do anything but laugh with him.

::

He tells Ransom which players him and Nursey need to be careful about before they get on the ice. It’s better than Madison because there are rules and regulations, but hockey is still hockey. He thinks about Jack going to the NHL next year.

 _Jesus,_ his Grandma says in his head as Derek drops his gloves, _be a fence._

::

When Aaliyah and Jay meet him at the door after they lose at the playoffs, he collapses into both of their arms without a word. Jay pats his back and Aaliyah rubs it, both of them saying how proud they are, how much they love Eric. He feels Meemaw sitting next to them. Aaliyah says that she and her Daddy found each other up in Heaven.

Jack comes up behind them and tells Eric when the bus back home is leaving, before shaking Jay and Aaliyah’s hands, hovering awkwardly for a second before waving goodbye and walking back towards the locker room. Aaliyah turns back to Eric with a question in her eye, and Jay makes an _oooooh_ sound. “Oh, he’s straight!” Bitty replies with an eye roll, and Jay laughs.

“Not for you, he ain’t,” Jay replies. Aaliyah laughs this time, and Eric can feel the blush creeping up his neck. Bitty never really came out to them. He just said something, and they paused for a second and went along with it, certain understands living between the three of them. _He’s got a little sugar in him, that’s all,_ their Aunties say.

“You better do that, Eazy. Avancar la raza!” Jay laughs harder and Eric squints.

“Bitch, you knew Spanish this _whole time_ and let my dumbass take French?”

That ends, as always, with the three of them hollering.

::

Jack _kisses him._ Eric’s foot pops and the world spins a little bit faster and fireworks go off in his head—

And then Jack has to go.

But the thing about being touch starved (except not on Tuesdays Thursdays and Saturdays, god bless Victor from Urban Planning), is that once you start, you never want to stop. So by the next day, they’ve made plans for Jack to come to Madison for the Fourth of July.

Momma gushes over him.

Coach doesn’t kick them both out, so.

Small victories.

::

They have sex in the back of a pickup truck while the fireworks go off over their heads. For the first time, Eric wants the whole world to see him.

For the first time, Eric is in that truck and doesn’t want to disappear.

::

Aaliyah facetimes him when he’s in Providence for the weekend, and, so hopped up on love and domesticity, Eric answers readily, not even pausing when Jack yells out something in the background. Aaliyah raises an eyebrow and shoves some more catfish in her mouth. It’s Fish Fry Friday at Alabama State.

“Hm, that sounds like a boy you _swore_ was straight.” She provides, the smile on her lips more proud than teasing.

“So you just gon’ act like I’ve never been wrong before.” Eric deadpans, and Aaliyah yelps with laughter.

Jay is at basic training, she says.

He thinks of their Uncles pictures on the mantle, set up like an altar to all this world had taken from his family in Vietnam. Lardo’s grandmother has a scar from her shoulder to her hip. America has a way of taking and never giving back.

“That nigga just want a Camaro,” Aaliyah provides, and they both giggle.

::

They _win._

Then, a little while later, _Jack wins!_

Aaliyah pushes him towards the ice, screams, “Go get him!” before getting swallowed into the crowd around her. Eric reaches Jack, stands in front of Jack, and —

Everything around them disappears after that.

Eric wakes up the next morning with his head tucked into Jack’s neck and Senor Bun in his hands. He doesn’t really give a fuck where the world went.

::

 _We’ll figure it out, just come home,_ Momma says. She’s probably sitting in his room, running her fingertips over the seams of all the stuffed animals Eric had taken from the spare room of Meemaw’s house before they had sold it.

 _Madison was never my home,_ Eric wants to say. _I can’t,_ Eric wants to say.

 _You fucking knew,_ Eric wants to scream until his throat bleeds. _You fucking heard me that day._

Instead, he forces a smile and says, “Yeah, Momma, maybe.”

Jack not getting an invitation back to Madison is really all any of them have to say.

::

Living with Jack, being with Jack, getting to smile at him and knowing he will smile back, is one of the best things Eric has ever experienced. He convinces himself Jack can be his family. He convinces himself that maybe the whole world doesn’t have to be big enough for the two of them, but this apartment is, and that’s more than enough.

Still.

The last time he ever steps foot in Madison goes like this:

“No, let’s talk about it,” Eric says, throwing down his napkin. “Let’s fucking talk about it!” His Father gets a stormy look in his eyes.

“Don’t use no language like that in front of us.”

“What did I do?” Eric replies, not missing a beat. “What did I do to make you hate me?

Coach squints. “I don’t hate you.” Then, “Maybe you hate us, how hellbent you are on embarrassing us, running around with another man like—”

“You _loved_ Jack until Jack fucking loved me, huh?”

“I’m not gonna tell you about that fucking language again!” Coach raises his voice, and Eric stands up without his own permission, anger coursing through him like it owned him. “You got up there with them white people —”

“Auntie Alba’s gay, Titi Jessie is gay, Uncle —”

“I didn’t raise none of them.” Coach replies, his face set into hard lines. For the first time, Bitty realizes how old his father is.

“And you raised me? When? Between pretending we weren’t related and hating me?”

With all the venom of a well-worn snake, with all the sting of a wasp whom's home had been destroyed, his father—his _father_ —yells out, "Eric! I just don’t fucking understand— I mean, _look at you!_ "

Suddenly, Eric’s shaved sides catch all of the hot air in the room, his exposed legs burn with the heat of Georgia, and his eyes — they burn with tears he won’t let fall. _Look at you,_ his Meemaw says when Eric puts on his church clothes. _Look at you,_ the boys in the locker room taunted. _Look at you,_ Jack says, with reverence in his voice.

 _Look at you!,_ Coach says.

Everyone is always looking. Eric wants to disappear.

He thought he had felt his heart break before. They have been at war this entire time, the secret that’s been threatening to pull him under and the people watching him drown. His mother is looking between the two of them like she's lost somewhere in the middle. "You—” He starts, but his voice cracks around it, his knuckles white where he’s gripping the back of the chair he had been sitting in. He makes a defeated noise, because he is fucking defeated, and ignores how something fractures on Coach’s face.

His mom chases him outside as he storms towards the bus station.

“Dicky, please wait—”

“You _knew._ ” Eric finally says, whipping around, tears falling down his face, his hands red, his voice quiet because he doesn’t want to the neighbors to hear. All this, and he’s still afraid of being an embarrassment, in fucking Madison.

In fucking Madison.

“I—” Suzanne starts, reaching out for him, a sob resting just beyond her mouth.

“You _heard me_ , that day,” Eric continues. “And you let me live in it. You made me the only person who knew me. For _years._ ”

“I was scared,” Suzanne whispers back, biting on her lip and still reaching out for him.

“I was _twelve._ ” Eric answers. Now he’s crying, the sobs wracking his body and hitting him in waves, cold water on his fully clothed body, the porcelain of a bathtub, the pain of it all, the metal of that payphone in Indiana, pressed against his body like he’ll never escape. His mother plants herself in the dirt next to him, her white pants smearing with mud. “ _I was twelve_.” He repeats, and then he screams for everything the world owes him.

The cicadas screech around them.

The sun is plunging from the sky.

Everything is falling apart.

::

He doesn't register that he's on a bus to Providence until he slumps against the cheap velvet of the seat.

He calls Jack when they make it halfway there, and Jack sends him the information to his plane ticket. Jack meets him at the airport, pulls him into big arms and says, “I love you,” and means it. There’s no, “We’ll figure it out,” because that’s all there is. Jack loves him.

::

A year after, when Jack loses in the final round of the playoffs, Bitty’s finally coaxed him into sleep, rubbing his back with promises of an even better run next year. There’s a voicemail on his phone he’s been replaying and replaying.

It’s from his dad. “I’m trying.” His dad says, and Eric hears something alien in his voice. He’s holding back tears. “I’m gonna try, okay?”

Eric smiles, sadly, and listens to it again. Jack is warm next to him, the light outside is soft as the sun decides to peek over the horizon. There’s a dog somewhere barking, and someone else is mowing their lawn, and Eric is going to be okay.

 _We’ll all try,_ he texts his father.

He gets a picture of his dad with a Falconer's hat on from his mom a minute later. He can hear the refrigerator running in the next room.

He’s going to be alright.

Two years from now, they’re going to find out that Jay is never coming home again. He and Aaliyah will cry for the rest of their lives and leave the funeral early, stomachs sick at the sight of an American flag draped over their cousin’s casket.

Twenty years from now, his two children, both with dark skin and curly hair, will groan as he blasts gospel music to wake them up for cleaning on Sundays, and he’ll smile back at them, taking their father’s hands and dancing down the hallway.

They’re going to be alright. The world will pay them all back what it owes, one day.

Someone’s alarm radio is too loud in the background. Eric lets the song wash over him, birth him again.

 

_“father, this prayer is for everyone that feels like they’re not good enough._  
_this prayer is for everybody that feels like they're too messed up._  
_for everyone that feels they've said ‘i'm sorry’ too many times,_  
_you can never go too far when you can't come back home again,_  
_that's why i need...”_ _  
_

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [tumblr.](http://www.dereknursey.tumblr.com) leave a comment if u can! [here's the prayer](https://soundcloud.com/kanyewest/ultralight-prayer) referenced in the beginning and end of this. we on an ultralight beam. thank u sm for reading and 1 million heart emojis.


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